SF Beer Week 2010: Bistro’s DIPA Festival, Alesmith at City Beer

© Anneliese Schmidt

Ali and I were staying down in Alameda, in an apartment overlooking Shoreline Drive: a stretch of 25-mph road flanked by gated complexes, sushi restaurants, and San Francisco Bay. In clear weather, the area offers some of the most photogenic angles of the City. And while we awoke that morning to sounds of rain and wind kicking against the window, it was still San Francisco Beer Week, and the Bay Area would still be pouring Double IPAs and Alesmith, rain or shine.

We had a full schedule, and left late. We bid our vehicle farewell until the evening (with bikes in the trunk, just in case) at the Fruitvale BART station, and headed south. After the Pliny the Younger release, and knowing the popularity of the Bistro’s Double IPA Festival, I was reasonably certain that Ali and I would spend some romantic time together beneath our undersized umbrella, contemplating our watches, discussing topics such as which one of us had been slowest to get ready that morning, and who had forgotten to pack the spare umbrella.

© Anneliese Schmidt

Sadly, the Bistro cares nothing for romance. Commemorative glasses and bright-green taster tickets were already being sold beneath a canopy in the cordoned-off block of Main Street (accessed through the Bistro’s side door). We were about the tenth people in line, and the kegs and pourers were ready to go as 11AM approached, amongst a small, groggy morning crowd and gradually clearing skies.

This was the Bistro’s 10th Annual Double IPA Festival, and possibly the craziest assemblage of über-hopped goodness that I’ve ever been party to: 58 beers pouring from across the country, the majority of them 8%+ ABV and 80+ IBUs (I can only guess what certain British and Swedish folks visiting for SF Beer Week were thinking…). Drakes, Firestone Walker, Sierra Nevada, Green Flash, Port Brewing, Stone, Valley Brew: a California-centric barrage of the lupulin inclined.

Downstairs inside the Bistro, past an employees-only sign and down a set of concrete steps that were not at all conducive for carrying glassware and camera equipment, a table of professional judges were hard at work determining the best of show. The mood was somber, words generally took the form of light-hearted jokes between adjacent pairs, and two cameramen had positioned themselves at opposite sides of the table, filming the beer-drinking equivalent of a chess match. While the crowd upstairs was growing, the mood feeling ever more boisterous, these folks were attempting to determine nuance and gauge differences in beers with names like “Palate Wrecker” and “Denogginizer” and “Hop Porno.” I found the whole thing really quite impressive and serene.

© Anneliese Schmidt

The winners of the professional judging went: #1 Pizza Port (Carlsbad) Welcome Back Wipeout, #2 Rubicon Hop Sauce, and #3 Triple Rock IIMAXX Imperial IPA. For the sixth (!) year in a row, the People’s Choice Award went to none other than Russian River Pliny the Younger. Personal highlights for me included getting to sample pours of Breakwater Maverick’s Double IPA (a reincarnation of the long-lost Pizza Port Frank: same brewer, same recipe) and the new Kern River Citra DIPA, from a brewery based out of Kernville, CA.

While the DIPA Festival started quietly (presumably due in no small part to the liver-stretching Opening Gala the night previous), approximately 1,500 people passed through the event throughout the day. This is not a small number of people. As we headed out, we ran into a person I’d met back in Reno who just so happened to have a keg of some Sierra Nevada Beer Camp beer in his trunk that he wanted us to try. This bolstered our spirits for the BART ride ahead.

© Anneliese Schmidt

City Beer Store is hosting some of the finest lower-key events during all of San Francisco Beer Week, including a Lost Abbey / Port Brewing session later tonight, a My Sour Valentine event at Triptych on Thursday, and the debut of Midnight Sun Brewing in the Bay Area on Friday. More information on all these events can be found on either City Beer’s website or from an earlier Hop Press article, the latter including partial beer lists. We were headed to the very first of the City Beer events: a tasting session featuring Alesmith Brewing Company out of San Diego.

This was the first of two SF Beer Week events (the other being their My Sour Valentine event) to be organized by City Beer at Triptych, a cozy restaurant and bar located just across the street. The decision had been made to host these festivities at the larger venue to allow the actual City Beer Store to concentrate on doing what it does best during normal hours: function smoothly as one of the best retail beer stores in the Bay Area (I’m being coy with my use of superlatives here).

We arrived about half an hour after the sold-out event had started, but it was quickly apparent that we were stepping into a different world than the one we had left behind in Hayward. The walls of this funky Folsom Street establishment were enlivened by brightly colored hexagonal tiles; LPs and accent pillows provided a sense of imminent comfort and nostalgia; and the term “sold-out” in this case applied to approximately 65 lucky Alesmith fans. This is to say nothing of the fact that the sun was out and shining now, which meant their back patio was open.

When I’d woken up that morning, this had not seemed like a possibility.

© Anneliese Schmidt

Craig and Beth, along with Jessica from Alesmith and employees from both Triptych and City Beer, had arranged the Alesmith pouring areas into three stations. In the back corner of the room were kegs of regular and Barrel-Aged Speedway Stout, along with bottles of their newly released Decadence 2009 (a weizenbock). The main bar included a rare keg of Evil Dead Red Ale. The patio bar added five more, including a keg of Lil Devil.

The entire vibe of the evening was rather different from earlier in the day: more relaxed, more quiet, more calm. The Bistro’s DIPA Fest offered the chance to see a huge section of the region’s craft beer community come together (whether pouring or sipping or judging), while the Alesmith event at Triptych had more of a cocktail-hour feel to it, in the most appreciative sense. We were able to sit down and chat awhile with a local Ratebeerian I hadn’t met before, we finally got to spend some time with fellow Hop Press writer Mark Dredge, and I managed to catch up with Craig as he hustled back and forth between City Beer and Triptych.

© Anneliese Schmidt

If you browse the ratings of Alesmith beers (in case you aren’t familiar with them), there are an amazing number of highly rated offerings on that list, and to be able to appreciate them casually in a relaxed, cozy environment with good people around can’t possibly be spoken highly enough of. In a number of ways, the Bistro’s DIPA Festival and City Beer’s Alesmith tasting session seem like something of yin and yang counterparts: two necessary and enjoyable elements of the craft beer world, encompassing everything from a quiet evening at your local brewpub to seemingly endless choices of new and hoppy offerings.

One encounters this dichotomy a lot in choosing between SFBW events.

After spending my last ticket on a final pour of Barrel-Aged Speedway Stout (which I’ve only had in limited portions previously), we picked up some choice bottles over at City Beer, met up with a Ratebeerian visiting from Sweden, and headed in the direction of Haight Street and Toronado. I’ll refrain from in-depth details, as we were only passing through, but we did track down some tasty kebabs and a little something called Love before heading home: our backpacks full, our heads rather clear, and much more SF Beer Week still ahead of us.

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